he accusation brought
against me by my enemies seemed almost ready to be realized, when my
body magnanimously assumed the penalty the soul was perhaps about to
pay, and drifted off to fever.

Then, for the first time, came the man I had until then believed a myth,
and sat beside me in the shadow, and administered to me small, mystic
pellets, that he assured me, in low, husky whispers, and foreign accent,
would infallibly cure my malady--my physical one, at least; as for the
mind, its forces, he regretted to add, were beyond such influence!

For a moment, the wild suspicion intruded on my fevered brain that this
leech was no other than Basil Bainrothe himself, disguised for his own
dark purposes; but the tall, square, high-shouldered form that rose
before me to depart (taller, by half a head, than the man I suspected of
this fresh deception), and the angular movements and large extremities
of Dr. Englehart, dispelled this delusion forever. After all, might he
not be honest, even if a tool of Bainrothe's?

I took the sugared miniature pills--the novel medicine he had left for
me--faithfully, through ministry of Mrs. Clayton's, and was benefited
by them; and, when he came again, as before, in the twilight, I was able
to be installed in the great cushioned chair he had sent up for me, and
to bear the light of a shaded lamp in one corner of the large apartment.

Dr. Englehart approached me deferentially, and, without divesting
himself of the light-kid gloves which fitted his large hands so closely,
he clasped my wrist with his finger and thumb, and seemed to count my
pulses.

"Ver much bettair," was his first remark, made in that disagreeable,
harsh, and husky voice of his, while he bent so near me that the aroma
of the tobacco he had been smoking caused me to cough and turn aside.

Still, I could not see his face, for the immense bushy whiskers he wore,
nor his eyes, for the glasses that covered them, nor his teeth, even,
for the long, fierce mustache that swept his lips; and when, after a
brief visit, he rose and was gone again, there remained only in my mind
the image of a huge and hairy horror--a sort of bear of the Blue
Mountains, from the return of which or whom I fervently hoped to be
delivered.

"Send him word I am better, Mrs. Clayton," I entreated; "I cannot see
him again, he is so repulsive; and, if you have a woman's heart in your
breast, never leave me alone with him, or with Mr. Bainrothe, when he
calls